Transcription
Hello. Hello. My name is Olaf Femi. I've made multiple seven figures flipping land. Some of that has been from subdivide profits as well. And I've helped many of my clients uh find, source, and execute successfully uh very profitable subdivisions.
Now, let's just get straight into it because a lot of people do ask about subdivides and how to do it. And so, this is the ultimate subdivide guide for 2026. And first things first, the core principle you need to understand is that land flipping and subdividing are both tools. They are not meant to be permanent businesses. I don't look at land flipping and subdividing as permanent businesses. There are many people who do uh but land flipping itself is very very high friction. Uh it supports a lifestyle for sure. for it is a lifestyle business but only for a limited time because it is really high friction and that's why it's effective.
I do look at land flipping as a stepping stone and nothing more. It's a vehicle to get you to where you need to go uh to get you to the point where you can build up mass amount of capital and be able to make smart investments so that you can be in control of your time, freedom, location, so on and so forth. And that's how I've utilized land flipping over the last several years of my life. The goal is to build capital, gain leverage, transition into bigger, smarter plays and smarter investments. You shouldn't aim to really flip land indefinitely. That would be like playing in the NFL for 30 years. It can be a very unsustainable goal. People that flip land for 30, 40, 50 years never to advance in their career. because I I really think that land flipping is out of 10. It's a probably level four business and there are level 10 businesses that where you can make way way way way more money, but this is a stepping stone. You can only get into those kinds of businesses if you master a business like this first and gain up capital.
So, let's get into it. Why people mess up subdivisions? The common misconception. Most people think that subdividing is a shortcut to getting rich faster when in fact it is not at all. Here's the reality though. Subdivisions multiply whatever you're already doing or whoever you already are. If your fundamentals as an operator are actually strong, it will scale you. If your fundamentals are weak, you'll get exposed. It'll be really, really difficult for you to subdivide a property, make a lot of money, hold on for six, seven, eight, nine months even until all the lots sell as well. This often leads to people jumping into subdivisions prematurely and getting trapped. The opportunity itself does not discriminate. It equally magnifies both your inherent strengths and your underlying weaknesses.
Before you even look to subdivide a deal, ask yourself these questions. Can you survive 12 to 24 months with no return? Your business must be stable, bills paid, and your composure maintained. I see so many people that try to jump into subdivides not understanding that you need to build the land flipping business first and foremost to be cash flowing first. So that way once you cash flow, you can hold on for a year. I have some projects that will take me 18 months. I have no problem with that. I'm not sweating because I have consistent cash flow from my land flipping business. And because of this, there's no part of me that's like, "Oh my god, what if this doesn't work? What if that?" I I don't It doesn't keep me up at night. and I know it will work. And because I'm not stressed out about it, it works even better. County approvals are a lot faster. Surveys are a lot easier. Selling the properties on market is a lot easier because I'm also just not stressed out about it. If you're relying on that monthly cash flow like I need this 30K or I need this 20K, I need this 10K every month to come in then and you don't have that recurring, then you shouldn't be focused on subdivides yet. This is not your your thing and your ticket, your magic ticket to get you rich. Subdivides build on cash flow. They do not replace it. If you need the deal to work, you should not be in the deal.
Let's talk about demand. Demand comes first in subdivides always. You do not decide the lot size. The market decides the lot size every single time. If 10acre parcels are not selling in an area, then do not create 10acre parcels. It's very simple. To truly understand market demand, you must deeply analyze these factors. What sizes are selling? How fast are they selling? Who is buying them? What are they using the land for? And one more thing, why are the people that are buying them buying them? You need to get a story on the market so that you can enter the market and sell extremely fast in that market. This means understanding if your buyers can actually build on it, hunt on it, or otherwise use it in the way that they'd expect for that specific area. Investigate the buyer's needs and intentions. Don't just assume. You can't subdivide your way out of weak demand. You can go in and see who's buying what and why they're buying it. You can look at the marketing. You can look at the photos. You can look at the drone shots. You can look at the stories being told on each property. And then you can make an informed decision on your markets from there. So you can reverse engineer your market selection. You can reverse engineer how you cut up deals as well.
The initial process is actually extremely simple. Now, if the goal is for you to subdivide, this is the exact process. You need to confirm that it's actually a minor subdivide. Minor subdivides qualify for administrative approval. So you need to make sure that you can get approval from the county. There'd be no reasonzoning required. You'd work within existing zoning rules and the density supports your plan. the underlying zoning already supports the number of lots that you want to create. When you confirm these things, it'll save you months and months of wasted effort, capital, and political uncertainty. Most of these county processes are extremely predictable, and many of them are able to approve plats in as little as a few months. I mean, we've seen 3 months. We've seen even less for getting plats actually approved once we submit them to the county. But you have to go backwards and make sure that the county is pretty lax on your area and on what you're trying to do. Uh and as as long as it's a minor subdivide as well, it can be really easy to get these things approved.
Then you need to specifically identify land that wants to be subdivided. You're not hunting land. Instead, focus on identifying properties naturally suited for subdivision. Here are some key things that you need to look for. Ample road frontage, clear legal access, existing or readily available utility access, a natural layout that supports multiple lots, location in an area where subdivisions are pretty common as well. And attempting to force a subdivision onto unsuitable land often leads to delays and complications and a lot of lost money. The best deals happen with properties where they are naturally going to be subdividable. So, if you have a lot of road frontage on one side or a lot of road frontage on both sides and you have utilities and so on and so forth, it's going to be a lot easier for you to subdivide on that deal. Where I see people mess up is where they try to force these deals and maybe it's not a lot of road frontage and then you just don't understand that. Like, you don't understand, okay, well, why can't I subdivide it? It's a pretty big lot, but it has very minimal road frontage. The only way for you to do that is if you actually put a road into it, in which case it would no longer be a minor subdivide because that's going to require a lot more than just a survey to actually subdivide it.
Total frontage, the overall length of road frontage present on the property. Frontage per lot determines if the frontage is sufficient for the desired number of new lots that you create. Multiple sides assesses if the property has road frontage along more than one boundary. I usually like to see if it has road access on I mean a perfect scenario in all four sides, but at least two sides. So, in an L-shape of road access is what I want to see. Ideally, road frontage goes beyond just like a small advantage. You need road frontage in order to do a successful minor subdivide. There's no way you're going to do this without it.
Access is absolutely key. You need legal access, documented right to access the property from a public road. You need practical access, physical ability to get to and use the property year round. And this can't be like a maybe. You need to be able to get there from the road. It needs to have every access easement possible. If you do not have this, you should not be subdividing that property. Either the property has access or it doesn't. If the access is unclear, everything is going to be way more difficult.
Utilities and water. Critical factors where deals fail. Power availability. Confirm distance to power lines, connection costs, and utility company approvals. Water availability. Assess well viability, municipal connections or water district acet. Water availability. Assess water availability. Assess well viability, municipal connections or water district access and capacity. Sewer or septic viability. Determine soil support for septic systems or access to municipal sewer. You need to also make sure that you have the right lot sizes. They need to be large enough to actually accommodate all required utility systems. If you don't have utilities, it's not going to work. It's it just you won't be able to do this at all.
You don't need the perfect parcel. You need the right parcel. So, understanding things like flood planes, FEMA flood zones restrict building and may require expensive mitigation efforts or really, really high flood insurance. Wetlands. You want to reduce the area in where there's going to be wetlands. If you're going to be subdividing on property, we want it ideally under 10%. We do not want wetlands because you also have to think on the end when someone goes to buy this from you, what is the desire? What's the desiraability going to be like on a property that's in wetlands? They're not going to want that. They want a prime lot if they're going to pay prime dollar for that lot. Topography. You want to stay away from things like slopes, drainage patterns, and areas and where it may not be buildable if that's the highest and best use. And lastly, actual usability. What are they going to use it for? Are they going to be able to hunt on it? Are they going to be able to go duck hunting? Are they going to be able to build on it? What can they actually do with the property? And are the average people in that area that are buying land within that area, are they doing the same thing? Is that a popular activity in that area? If the land is not usable in the highest and best use way of the average area, no deal. There's not going to be an area there's not going to be a opportunity for you to minor subdivide and make a very large amount of money.
Subdivide rules and details. Minimum lot sizes. The smallest parcel size permitted by zoning and subdivision regulations. Minimum frontage. The minimum road frontage required per lot adhering to county or municipal standards. Setbacks. Mandatory distances from property boundaries where construction is not allowed. Conditions and fees. Any additional subdivision requirements, impact fees, or infrastructure contributions. Once feasibility is confirmed, reviewing these specific details is key. Clear administrative process help ensure predictable timelines and prevent unexpected complications.
Brokers are really important. Many people don't know how to use them though. Brokers often get criticism and really because a lot of people struggle to find the right land specific broker. Like I said before, you need to find land man land man if you want to truly be able to sell your properties quickly. And when you find a person like that, you're going to be able to sell through. I mean, a guy that really goes on the property with his boots, understands what's going on, has sold land spec specifically for the past five, 10 years plus. These are the brokers that you want to use. And these brokers are worth five, six, eight, I've paid as much as 10% for this kind of broker. Now, a broker that's selling land on the side and, you know, apartments here and houses there, it's not who you want. A good land broker actively sells land. They understand buyer behavior. They may even have buyers in their pocket for your specific lots. They have subdivision expertise because they've already done this before. And they strategize pricing and ex exit options. They understand that you don't want to sit on market for 365 days. They understand that you want to be able to exit within 100 days if you can.
Now, here's the other thing. Brokers do not make decisions for you. Brokers are your a player employees if you allow them to be. The right broker will bring you on the ground intelligence that you will not get anywhere else. Chat GPT won't tell you that. Nothing else will tell you that but the broker that's been there and selling properties there for years. The other thing that brokers do as well is they have a certain kind of trust level with the marketplace because they've sold so many properties there. Whereas you don't have that trust level with the marketplace because you're not local in that area. So using a broker really does have its advantages if you do it right. You should not have any problem giving up 5 to 10% of commission if they're really going to be that A+ player employee and sell your properties quickly.
Now let's revert back to capital and timeline check cuz this is extremely important. Can your capital be committed for 12 to 24 months? You must be able to leave your money untouched without needing it and without any stress in return about it timeline. And even if you're going to get deal funding, you have to think about can the return on this, can you sustain that not getting that money, not seeing that money for 12 to 24 months, even though it may take a lot a lot less time, you have to think, okay, can I wait a year for this money to come back? And if the answer is no, you should not be doing this. If your cash flow is going to be insulated from a deal like this, you should not be doing this.
When it comes to subdivides as well, you shouldn't have any pressure to succeed. You shouldn't be like, I have this deal has to work. It has to work. It has to work. Because you're going to stress yourself out way too much. And if you're thinking like that, you're not advanced enough yet to handle subdivides. You're just not. And so you need time flipping land, doing standard flips, 30K a pop, 50K a pop, 80K a pop, so on and so forth up until the point where you build up your capital and cash flow enough to where you're able to walk away if it doesn't work out.
You want to define your actual plan. So how are you going to cut the lots up? How many lots are they going to be? What sizes are they going to be? What is the buyer profile of each lot? What is the average buyer profile? And how quickly do you expect to move these parcels in what time frame? And you can also tell this by what time frame the average lots of the same size and use are moving in as well. Getting these details extremely important to make sure that you're able to come up with an actual plan of action and plan of attack to exit quickly.
Here's what a lot of people actually miss, though. When people list subdivides, they only list the single individual lots. And there's a period of time where you submit your plat to the county and where it's still just one parcel. You should offer this parcel to the marketplace as just a standalone parcel. I've done this in I've done this in many cases and been able to profit on the larger parcel before I actually before the county even approved the plat. So then it ended up being that I didn't even need the plaque because I sold the property. So even though yeah, I got it surveyed, I submitted it to the county, I went through the whole process, but I listed the whole parcel on the market, a buyer came in, swooped in, and bought the property for me at the price that I wanted, and I still made money on that a lot faster than if I would have sold all the lots individually. And so you need to give yourself options. Give yourself optionality because this game, the land flipping business, is about quick cash flow. You want to turn this money over as fast as possible. The more times you turn it over, the more money you make, the faster you make that money, the better you you you will get, the better the faster you'll build up your wealth, the faster you'll get to the point where you can build up an investment portfolio that pays you for the rest of your life. And that's really what you want to use a land flipping business at as you don't want to use this as something that like you're just going to do forever. You don't. And you can, many people do. I know people that want to flip land for their whole life. I'm not one of those people. And so it's important for you to understand that this is a stepping stone. And so when it comes to exiting, this game is about getting in, getting rich, and getting out out of every single deal.
When it comes to selling your property on the market, we still want to be at anywhere from 80 to 90% of actual market value. And we test that price. And usually when we test that price, it ends up working because people think that they're getting it as a as a steal. As leads start to come in, we're tracking common objections that they're saying. We're tracking what kind of offers they're making. We're tracking if they want to actually do showings on the property. We're tracking which lots they like, which lots they're more privy to. And we regularly we will adjust price and we'll adjust price based upon all these things as well.
So, the exact steps for successfully completing the minor subdivide, you need a survey, a professional surveyor that will go in get the boundaries and measurements for each new parcel. You need a plat. You need to create the official subdivision plat detailing all the lots, easements, and infrastructure. You have to go through the county administrative process. You submit the plat and the supporting documents for county approval. Then the county will approve you from there.
Now, when it comes to marketing specifically for subdivides, this is what a lot of people miss. When I go after subdivides, and I'm currently working on multiple projects exactly how I'm explaining right now. When I go and market for these properties, when I go and market for these opportunities, it is very specific targeting. I'm targeting maybe six to eight, maybe even 900 leads and lots based upon specific characteristics and categories that I see in specific areas, right? And even from there, the marketing package is very very detailed. Like we send out proper marketing packages. It it looks like I mean at this point we are I could call us a small PE firm but it does look like it comes from a private equity firm, right? It looks like wow these people are extremely professional. These people are well capitalized. These people are not going to waste my time. They know everything about my property. This is who they are. And we also show like we've also created value in the marketplace before this and this is what we're looking to do. So, give us a call here. It's way it's way more extensive than the regular postcard or two-page direct mail letter template. It's not a volume play like when you're marketing for these kinds of deals for these kinds of deals and where you can make multiple six multiple seven figures. It's not. It's very hyperargeted when we're going after these deals from there.
Now, talking about exit strategies, like I spoke about before, you can exit from the entire parcel and just sell one parcel, the entire one to a single buyer before the plat's approved. That's happened to me a couple times. You can sell them individually, one by one, with a B broker as buyers come and close. And this is another one as well, but you can release parcels strategically. you can kind of pent up demand and say, "Oh, well, we have this one that will be released in this time and this one that will be released in this time and so on and so forth." And as people call, you can wait to release the listings. If you wait to release listings and a broker or so has a actual list of buyers, and this has worked really well for us, one that has a list of pocket buyers and people that have done business with them before, that can actually pent up a lot of a lot of demand from people in the area that want to buy lots like yours. But all in all, the best exit is the one that's going to turn the capital over as fast as possible.
After you exit, you want to identify what worked really well. Identify the decisions that accelerated the process and protected your margin. Areas for improvement, where you can get better, where were the friction points, delays, constraints, and bottlenecks. You want to demand if you were correct on your analysis of the market and exiting these parcels. You want to see how the broker did. I always rate a broker 1 through 10, A through F. How did they do? And I'll be honest and I'll I'll even tell them, "Hey, here's where we could have tightened up on this." If a broker is not sending us detailed reports of what happened that week, calls, offers, so on. If they're not sending us that, showings, people like objections, constraints that people had, if they're not sending us that every week, we give them a form to actually fill out. If they don't send us that, not interested. And then county process efficiency. You want to see how efficient was the county. You want to start to see if you can strengthen your relationships with that county if you had a successful deal because ultimately the county does many counties want more lots like this. It it incentivizes them. It's good for them. Makes them more money.
Now, the major rule that governs everything I talked about, you want to get in, get rich, and get out. That is for land flipping. That is for subdividing. That is for all of it. This is not necessarily about land ownership. Even though I have taken ownership of a lot of deals that I could have done, but instead I decided that I was getting into such a deal that I was just going to keep it. But when you're starting out, it's about speed. You want to speedun yourself to multiple six figures and seven figures. That's the whole point of this. Speed run to multiple six figures and seven figures net cash. That's the whole point. And you don't want to have emotional attachment to any of these deals. I see some people just completely burn out because they're emotionally attached to these deals. It's not about that. What did you come into this to do? And I think if a lot of people are honest with themselves, you are not passionate about land flipping. You are passionate about making money. And that's okay. Whenever I hear people that are like, "Oh, I love the land game." And I don't get me wrong, I love land. I do. But am I intensively passionate about it? No, honestly I'm not. I am passionate about finding identifying problems in people, solving those problems extremely quickly and providing massive value to the marketplace, getting paid for it. That's what I'm passionate about. And so when you understand that, you kind of take out the emotional attachment of it and just realize, okay, the game is about getting in, getting rich, and getting out and making sure that you make smart investments along the way.
If you want my personal help executing this strategy or the land flipping business strategy, feel free to apply to work with me and my team below and we'd be happy to see if we can help.